Lights Will Guide You Home
by prosopopeya
Summary: Chess fic. FreddieFlorence. It's funny how their lives swirl around, everything they'd ever known shattering into unrecognizable pieces. Maybe he would laugh about it, but what he really finds funny is how everything circles back to the beginning again.


**Title:** Hear You Laugh, I Heard You Sing  
**Author:** Shelli(**labellacaracol**)  
**Pairing:** Freddie/Florence  
**Rating:** PG-13  
**Disclaimer:** I don't own the musical Chess, but I do have a lovely chess board.  
**Summary:** It's funny how their lives swirl around, colors mixing and everything they'd ever known colliding against the walls and shattering into unrecognizable pieces. If he were a lesser man, maybe he could laugh about it, but what he really finds funny, what really gets to him, is how everything eventually circles back to the beginning again.  
**Notes:** Written for a friend (Arqueete) who is obsessed with Chess.

**Lights Will Guide You Home**

He thought he had it all under control. Merano, Florence, his life. Then it was Bangkok, Anatoly, the chess world. But everything fell apart and he dictated it all to the cameras, breathing in the thick air of Thailand.

Thing is, he still thinks he has it under control.

* * *

It takes a fair bit of convincing himself. He does little to hide the drinking, and it isn't a problem, not yet. He's living on money from old championships, but it's burning out fast. It isn't anything he concerns himself with, though. That's Florence's job. (He still hasn't come to put that in the past tense.) 

He figures he drinks because he's angry.

**Truth:** He drinks because he doesn't realize how much it hurts.

* * *

Somewhere underneath the bravado, in the moments before he goes to sleep, he reasons things out, thinks about what everyone lost. Anatoly lost his freedom, his wife. He lost Florence, and here Freddie could sympathize, in these moments when his thoughts barely even form sentences and are more feeling than anything else. He won the tournament, but for once Freddie wasn't sure whether he could put chess above everything else. Florence lost her father, her hope. She lost someone who was infinitely better for her than Freddie ever was, someone who could take care of her. 

And Freddie? He lost the game. He lost his dignity. He lost anything that ever meant anything to him. Hell, he lost his sobriety. In the great tradition of Every Woman in his Life, he lost Florence.

There was one thing he hadn't lost that he wishes he could just get rid of. It eats him from the inside out. Florence left him; she's gone, he lost her. But he's still in love with her.

It's the last whisper of something that slides deep, _deep_ through his mind and it's here where he falls asleep. Freddie was always good at escaping.

* * *

When he sees her in the café, his first thought is that he must still be drunk. He picks up his glass of water and downs it, wishes for something harder, but a few weeks ago there was a bar fight and some fucking idiot deserved what he got, but what Freddie wound up with was anger management and AA meetings. He wouldn't be surprised to find his parole officer hired someone to tail him, so he glances over his shoulder and thinks twice about ordering a scotch. 

She doesn't see him at first, and he wonders if he ought to make a move, go over and say something, which had never really been a good strategy for Freddie Trumper, but he was never good at learning lessons. He stands, leaves his chair pushed out into the path of a waiter, and crosses over to her table.

(Here's where he feels vulnerable and that's where it slips in without him even noticing.) He sits down like he has it all under control and he grins at her, hands on the table and sun warming his hair.

"Hi."

Her eyes widen with surprise and something like _how dare you_ slides into her features, but Freddie doesn't recognize it as anything out of the ordinary.

"Freddie?"

"Have you missed me?" He feels cocky out of necessity and raises his eyebrows expectantly.

She narrows hers and frowns, glancing away and paling. Her hands twist in her napkin. He wonders if she's thinking of Anatoly.

"No."

There's more she wants to say; he can hear it in the way she chokes on that one word. He smiles, leans forward, gives her the look that usually won him any argument they ever fought. "Liar."

But here she frowns deeper and looks up at him with something similar to how she looked in Merano and he feels the air drain out of him.

"Leave me alone."

She gets up and leaves, dropping money on the table, and Freddie stares at her empty chair until a waiter nudges him and asks if he wants to move his food to this table.

* * *

It's an interesting chain of events. 

He bails on a few anger management sessions, skips out on AA, and winds up in a car—it wasn't his _technically_, but he was going to give it back—that crashes into a mailbox. He passes out more from the booze than anything else and when he wakes up, rehab is worse than anything he's ever been involved with, including Communists.

It's three more strikes before any therapist is able to hold him in rehab long enough for anything to really take hold. It isn't a matter of hitting bottom. He's been scraping at that for years; it's when he opens his eyes in another hospital with another police officer muttering "car accident" and "telephone pole" and he realizes maybe it wouldn't be so bad to hang out someplace where they'll feed him for free.

It's a few years later, you see, when Freddie makes small headline news, finally sticks to rehab. He's working on a method of _take a breath; count to ten_. Someone even gave him a rosary to count it out on, and it stays in his pocket because somewhere in his mind he has the idea that maybe now, maybe he can handle Florence. She's an addiction too, but rehab hasn't cleaned her out of his system.

So imagine his surprise when she slides into the seat across from him. He glances up from his game of solitaire, rosary dangling from his hip, scent of sterile sheets and a hospital atmosphere clinging to his shoulders. She skips hello.

"Is this the real you?"

He starts off with _what the hell_— and reaches for the beads, sliding his thumb over them. "Yeah." It's soft and he watches her eyes, then takes another breath to say it again because he likes to hear it. "Yeah, it's the real me."

She nods, hair falling over her shoulders and she looks a little older but oh, oh how he missed her eyes. She glances to the side and watches the trees outside for a few minutes before she stands, steps up beside him.

Her lips burn against his cheek.

It's over too soon, the brush of contact, and he watches her leave, heart beating in his chest.

* * *

He gets out of rehab and finds a phone booth. She's there, Vassy, Florence. He holds his breath and dials and listens for the rings—_one, two, three_--and oh God, she isn't going to answer. 

"Hello?"

His stomach drops out and his hand sweats around the handle. He thinks of whiskey and swallows hard, reaching for the beads.

"Florence."

He hears her hesitation and feels his pulse push at his temples.

"Freddie."

They agree to meet for lunch. All he can think about is her eyes.

* * *

There's discussion over sandwiches about life, rehab, her job as a secretary, his job possibilities. She tells him where he can find a good apartment cheap, and he asks her what brought her to the city in the first place. 

The whole conversation it feels like neither of them is really involved, and each one is withdrawn, waiting for this to shatter to pieces before them. His blood crawls and he's anxious, and he curls his hand inside his pocket. This is harder than they said it would be.

He's always been pretty good at blurting things out, so when she's in the middle of a sentence about her neighbor's dog, he cuts her off.

"Did you miss me?"

She stops, stares at him with wide eyes until they start to tear and she turns away.

"Yes."

It's a start.

_Jump._


End file.
